Emergent Research

EMERGENT RESEARCH is focused on better understanding the small business sector of the US and global economy.

Authors

The authors are Steve King and Carolyn Ockels. Steve and Carolyn are partners at Emergent Research and Senior Fellows at the Society for New Communications Research. Carolyn is leading the coworking study and Steve is a member of the project team.

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Disclosure Policy

Emergent Research works with corporate, government and non-profit clients. When we reference organizations that have provided us funding in the last year we will note it.
If we mention a product or service that we received for free or other considerations, we will note it.

The company hasn't t yet announced which cities will be included in the Treasure Truck’s nationwide launch, but it is expected to initially include about a dozen locations.

The Treasure Truck is yet another example of the rapidly expanding industry of truck-based commerce.

The drivers behind this trend are:

trucks are cheaper to open and operate than traditional stores.

trucks are mobile and provide a way to tap into a broader pool of customers.

trucks attract attention making them useful for branding and advertising.

We have more on this in our Food Trucks/Mobile Commerce section. In this section you will a wide variety of truck-based retailers including art galleries, financial services vendors, shoe stores, fashion trucks of various kinds and even a truck that sells yarn.

Charlotte, N.C., financial planner Marsha Barnes cruises around in a refurbished school bus dispensing financial advice. So far she's advised over 4,000 people on her bus.

Key quote on why she is truck-based:

Barnes launched the mobile aspect of her practice in November 2014 to help a broader pool of people than she could assist in a traditional office. Purchasing a small bus she calls The Finance Bar, she enlisted a sorority sister to design the sleek, pared down interior in soothing tones.

The bookstore and bookmobile are part of the broader trend towards a growing number of independent booksellers. These are single stores or small chains that are filling the gap left by the decline of the big book chains.

Key quote from the article on this trend:

In 2015, the American Booksellers Association counted 1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations, a big jump from 2009, when the group had 1,401 stores in 1,651 locations. “The trend is unmistakable, and we see it not only continuing but growing,” said Oren Teicher, the ABA’s chief executive.

The drivers behind the return of bookmobiles and the rise of financial planning trucks (and yes, the bad pun was intended) are same as those behind the growth of food trucks and other forms of truck-based commerce.

Trucks are cheaper to open and operate than traditional stores, provide a way to tap into a broader pool of customers and also attract attention.

From the NYT article:

Ms. Hayes found the van on eBay last spring, and bought it for $10,000 from a library in Georgia. The van was already outfitted with angled shelves, which keep the books from flying off, but still needed $20,000 worth of work.

It is a logical and efficient way for a small bookstore to expand its footprint, especially as big chains have shuttered locations, leaving a vacuum for enterprising independent stores to fill.

We've long followed the growing use of trucks of various kinds as rolling retail stores.

Our Food Truck/Mobile Commerce section covers this in more detail. In this section you will a wide variety of truck-based retailers including art galleries, shoe stores, fashion trucks of various kinds and even a truck that sells yarn. Fun stuff.

The key article quote goes to the heart of why mobile retail is becoming more popular - lower costs and risks - and comes from the founder of Nomad:

“I had very briefly considered opening a brick-and-mortar,” Ms. Goldenberg said. “But after working at a small boutique in Brooklyn and observing the overhead and seasonal cash flow, I knew it would be too much of a risk for me just starting out. Having the truck involved a lower total start-up cost and felt a lot less risky.”

In addition to increasing numbers of mobile retail trucks, there are other signals truck-based commerce is moving from the fringe towards the mainstream.

Food trucks are also the leading edge of a broader trend toward mobile, truck-based commerce. Entrepreneurs in a wide range of other product and service categories, such as clothing, personal services and even business to business goods and servicesare recognizing the economic advantages of food trucks and applying this approach ... Emergent Research expects the broader mobilecommerce segment to also rapidly expand over the next five years.

September 25, 2014

It's a truck that sells yarn. In the article the owner says the secret sauce of this is business is:

The truck at the very least is a curiosity. Everyone, knitter or not, wants to come on-board to see what it’s all about! Most especially though, yarn lovers yearn for the “squish factor": the ability to feel and “pet” fibres and bask in the range of colours. With the Purlin’ J’s brand, I strive to create a carefully curated selection of yarns, including luxurious hand-dyed yarns created right here in Ontario, and other “fascinating fibre paraphernalia”, in a small-scale, flexible, and novel retail environment that is responsive to the market. The truck can travel to communities where unique yarns are simply not available. But my regular customers also appreciate the personal shopping experience.

As we've pointed out in the past, a growing number of entrepreneurs across a wide range of industries are recognizing the economic and business model advantages of truck-based commerce.

Most Millennials surveyed (89%) seek out fast, casual food they deem healthier, tastier and “more customized” than fast food, and they’re willing to pay more for it, the survey revealed.

At the same time, the nation's appetite for food trucks continues to grow. Cities across the country are liberalizing food truck laws in response to growing demand and people from all walks of life are starting food trucks.

We're not surprised by either development and see them as linked.

As we pointed out in our 2012 study Food Trucks Motor Into the Mainstream, patrons see food trucks as a higher quality but fast alternative to traditional fast food. We also pointed out a cultural shift towards healthy, fresh and locally grown food would allow food trucks to charge more than traditional fast food.

Add in the ability of food trucks to give their customers a unique, novel and fun experience to report on in social media, and it's easy to see why more people are choosing food trucks.

The idea of cognitive cooking is machines and humans working together—in this case, a very complex analytic system drawing from the vast collected knowledge of chemistry, food culture and taste preferences to help chefs break new ground.

Cognitive computing is a broad term that describes computing systems that understand the world in the way that humans do: through senses, learning, and experience. IBM's well known Watson system is often used as an example of cognitive computing.

Below is a short IBM video describing cognitive computing.

The IBM food truck will be at South by Southwest in March and you can follow them on Twitter - #IBMFoodTruck.

August 27, 2013

Way back in 1998 a couple of consultants coined the term "the experience economy" and urged companies to offer interesting and unique experiences in addition to products and services.

According to the consultants:

"an experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event."

While the experience economy gained some traction in the late 90s and early 2000s, the advent and success of social media has driven "experiences" into the mainstream. The reason is simple - social media allows people to record their experiences and share them with the world.

And people love to share their experiences. But they also need experiences worthy of sharing - which is driving the growth of experiences that are shareable via social media.

The growth of food trucks is my favorite examples of an industry being impacted by people wanting to share experiences. There's no doubt one of the drivers of the growth of food trucks is the experience they provide and the ability for their customers to share that experience via social media.

It’s hard to find a cluster of people standing beside a food truck in Los Angeles, who are NOT on their phones. They are tweeting their experience by the minute, instagramming their orders, and if they’re like me, blogging on the go.

The recording and sharing experiences on social media is so common that people are becoming increasingly worried they are missing out.

This is the apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences that you're missing out on. The number of people suffering from FOMO has dramatically increased due to the Internet and social media.

Social media, the desire to share experiences and our fear of missing out are combining to drive greater and greater interest in social media shareable experiences. Businesses that can figure out how to add shareable experiences to their product/service lines will accrue substantial benefits.

Bureaucrats are dictating where they can operate, when they must close, even what part of the truck they can serve from. City hall picked which trucks would be licensed based on their ability to “contribute to Montreal’s brand image as a gourmet city.” If you planned to serve hotdogs, they had better be hand-crafted and locally sourced. And your poutine should be topped with foie gras or wild mushrooms.

After 60 years of laws against street food of any kind, this spring Montreal decided to start a pilot project to evaluate food trucks. But due to heavy pressure from existing restaurants, the city is putting strict limitations on food truck numbers and operations.

We've posted in the past on the regulatory battles happening around food trucks. Brick and mortar restaurants don't like the competition and are using their political power to try and fend off food trucks.

This is a common response to competition based on a new business models - examples include the U.S. auto industry versus Japanese automakers, traditional airlines versus low cost airlines, independent booksellers versus Amazon - the list goes on and on.

LoMo has three tractor-trailers that pull up to businesses, neighborhoods and schools to give customers the opportunity to buy fresh ingredients from local vendors.

We've been writing a lot of articles in our food truck section on new types of truck-based mobile commerce. In fact, we're writing so much on this we're changing the category name to Food Truck/Mobile Commerce.